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The Golden Record: Far Beyond Our Galaxy

August 18-October 7, 2018 ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art

Artists Mickey Boyd, Catherine Clements, Matthew Flores, Keaton Fox, Mary Gordon, Gerald Habarth, Katlin Shae, Braden Skelton, Stephanie Sutton, T2R, Robby Toles, Momma Tried, and Harrison D. Walker

Curators Curated by Brooke Leeton, Rebecca Brantley, Jon Vogt, and Paula Runyon

About The Golden Record: Far Beyond Our Galaxy Forty-one after the launch of NASA’s Voyager vessels, ATHICA celebrates the legacy of the Golden Record in an exhibition featuring work by regional and national artists. The Golden Record: Far Beyond Our Galaxy is the inaugural exhibition at ATHICA’s new location in the Leathers Building.

In 1977, NASA launched two Voyager space probes designed to gather information about the in our . Both were outfitted with a Golden Record, a gold-plated copper disk with a compilation of 103 sounds and 115 images from selected by a committee led by scientist and educator Carl . The hope was that they might be discovered and decoded by alien in the future. Both disks bear the sounds of the Brandenburg Concerto, greetings in 55 languages, thunder, crickets, a heartbeat, and “Johnny B. Goode” by , along with images of the minutiae of Earth, such as a woman in a supermarket, rush-hour traffic, and children standing around a globe.

The Golden Record exhibition is inspired by the images and sounds seared into the records affixed to the Voyager spacecraft. The exhibition features works in all media, including sound, video, interactive media, found objects, and handmade materials. It reflects on the beautiful and daft hopefulness of the Golden Records going forth for 40,000 years to be almost near the next closest .

Support ATHICA is a community-supported, all-volunteer, 501(C)(3) organization. Our new home has been made possible through the support of our strategic partner, The James E. and Betty J. Huffer Foundation. Matthew Flores What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA Since the Golden Record will never again be viewed (in-person, at least) by a , it is specifically tailored, both in its design and its purpose, for a non-human audience. This opens a very interesting gap in how we think about art and viewership more broadly—what does it mean to take ourselves out of an anthropological frame of reference and view the world in a different way? This is the impetus behind Art for Alternative Audiences 001 and 002. Is it Art For Alternative Audiences 001 & 002: Who’s a Good Boy? possible to create art designed and deployed specifically for a non-human audience? Can we ever take ourselves out of our established ways of viewing? Digital Video Even if, on the surface, these are works meant to hold meaning primarily for a dog, what meaning can it establish for a human? Art for Alternative Audiences Loop 001 and 002 establishes the fact that even non-anthropological art says something about viewing from the human experience. Even if it’s for the other, it’s NFS always about ourselves. Biography Matthew Flores is a multimedia artist and an MFA Candidate in Photography at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia. His studio practice is rooted in strategies of misdirection and appropriation, and orbits around an interest in how the art viewing experience can be analogized with the format of jokes, performance, and the theatrical. His current research interests involve the function of anticipation and failure in aesthetics. He received his BA in Art History from the School of Visual Studies at the University of Missouri in 2015.

matthew-flores.com

Curator’s Thoughts Matthew Flores’ Art For Alternative Audiences 001 & 002: Who’s a Good Boy? consists of dual screens playing short videos. Art For Alternative Audiences 001 shows two women (or one woman digitally replicated), identical save for their blonde and brunette hair. In quick succession, they pose the same titular question in varying tones, emphasis, and intonation: “Who’s a good boy?” Playing on an adjacent screen, Art For Alternative Audiences 002 shows a toy shaped like a steak held in an outstretched hand. The disembodied hand squeezes the toy, emulating the melody of George Thorogood & The Destroyers’ “Bad to the Bone” (1982) and Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” (1956) in atonal, squeaky sounds.

Flores’ installation is made for dogs. As such, it recalls the Golden Record’s effort to communicate with non-human viewers and listeners. Flores uses a common appeal to pets, the meaningless phrase “Who’s a good boy?,” and songs that employ dog tropes to imply a deceptive or irredeemable-but-desir- able partner (despite the fact that dogs are associated with fidelity in Western culture). Of course, neither the meaning of the phrase or the song is compre- hensible to canines, though the soothing—almost sensual—tone of the women’s voices and the toys’ sounds are meant to appeal to them.

Seeking to communicate with in a manner akin to Flores’ effort to make art for dogs, the Golden Record nevertheless remains bound to language: fragments of human speech are part of the montage of Earth sounds, binary code records its images of Earth, and pictographic instructions ex- plain assemblage and use of the physical record. Both Flores and the creators of the Golden Record run into the ontological constraints of art and language: Can we meaningfully communicate with a non-human audience via art or other methods of representation? Seen through the lens of Flores’ droll videos, such an act is revealed as both transgressive and absurd.

Rebecca Brantley Momma Tried What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? New Orleans, LA By creating work that is designed to be archived, Momma Tried aims to contribute to technoprogressive discourse about social constructivism and media ecology in the near and far future. Projects such as the Golden Record paved the way for us to imagine our potential future audience as being inclusive of both human and non-human individuals, expanding the scope and significance of archival practices to include voyages into the deep unknown. Goodbye Horses, Star Mall Digital photograph, augmented reality Biography Goodbye Horses (1:00), Star Mall (1:02) Momma Tried is a transmedia art project focused on photography, site-specific installations, emerging , and a print periodical by the same name. $400 each Rooted in constructivism and the confrontation of cooperative fictions, much of their work asks: “How does imagination and popular media shape reality?” and “How does art program the future?” Momma Tried magazine is stocked in locations that include the Tate Modern in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, MoMA PS1 in , and Closing Ceremony in Shanghai, and the artworks of Momma Tried have been exhibited internationally, including the CICA Museum, South Korea; Think Tank Gallery, ; Cooper Union, New York, and Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans.

Momma Tried is the collaboration of Theo Eliezer and Micah Learned.

Augmented reality app: programsynthesis.net Momma Tried website: www.mommatriedmagazine.com

Curator’s Thoughts Momma Tried’s transmedial works Goodbye Horses and Star Mall assume the point of view of an artificially intelligent being, traversing digital landscapes comprised of two-dimensional imagery. In Goodbye Horses, the viewer is taken on a journey through the desert, with one of the songs chosen for the Gold- en Record, ’s mournful tune “Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground” (1927), as the soundtrack. This song connects viewers with the strange juxtapositions between the analog (the strum of an acoustic guitar) and the digital (the glitch-induced appearance of a phone booth). But perhaps more fundamentally, Johnson’s blues guitar and yearning hum also recall the human attraction to music, and are a haunting reminder of the musician’s . Johnson only recorded a handful of songs in his lifetime and died living in the ruins of his burned-down home. Yet, as captured on the Golden Record, his music triumphs, positioned to outlast us all as an enduring reminder of human creativity.

Brooke Leeton Stephanie Sutton What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA Included on the Voyager’s Golden Record was the image Demonstration of Licking, Eating, and Drinking, illustrating the physicality of human eating. My iteration of the feeding performance, remixed as video, is seen from a perspective over my shoulder. An ice cream cone, a grilled cheese sandwich, and an entire pitcher of water are fondly looked at and played with as I eat them from start to finish. How does observation look under the pressure of spatial Demonstration of Licking, Eating, and Drinking distance and time? In this work, real time is obscured with dropped frames marking its inevitable data loss, resembling a glitching strobe light or blinking Multi-Channel HD Video eye. My desire to be seen is an interstellar impulse reflected in astrophysicist ’s motivation behind his Golden Record passion project: where to 4:58 find us, how we do things, and what we look like. $710 Biography Stephanie Sutton’s work utilizes photography, video installation, sculpture, and performance to probe transformative notions of discipline and pleasure. Employing herself as subject, she borrows from conventions of ritual and labor to embody ideas of self-control and complicate assumptions of the fat body. She received her MFA from the University of Georgia in 2017.

stephanie-sutton.com

Curator’s Thoughts Stephanie Sutton’s work Demonstration of Licking, Eating, and Drinking revises the iconic photograph of these biological performances from the Golden Record. In addition to changing the medium to video, she also renegotiates the position of the lens. By shifting the point of view to a spot behind her right ear, Sutton allows the viewer access to the artist’s own face, making us privy to a more intimate portrait of these mundane physiological functions.

Brooke Leeton Keaton Fox What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Cambridge, MA When I think about the Golden Record, I think about the relationship between and space. I think about the ways in which humans attempt to explore and understand something as seemingly incomprehensible as the . It makes me smile. I think it is cute. Humans can be ugly creatures, but our relationship to space always feels romantic. Space makes us small, yet curious. We are aware of how little we can truly comprehend but there is still the PROOFS urge to understand the way everything around us works. PROOFS is a video that explores this uniquely human urge. Video 2:33 Biography NFS Keaton Fox is a multidisciplinary artist who uses art and technology to reflect the digital disarray of the modern world. Fueled by childlike fascination and frustrations, Fox combines the natural with the virtual to create visual experiments that playfully explore the varied realities of our time. She has exhibited nationally, internationally, physically, and digitally.

Curator’s Thoughts Keaton Fox’s video PROOFS conjures the sights and sounds of Earth captured on the Golden Record. It opens with what appears to be the vantage point of an observer laying on the ground looking up at the underside of a tree’s limbs swaying in the wind as sunlight shows through the irregular spaces created by the intersecting branches. About forty seconds into the sylvan scene, a hammer appears and shatters the image. It reveals the vantage point to be an illusion created by a mirror laying flat on the ground. PROOFS thematizes the illusory of images and the foibles of perception. Perhaps most poi- gnantly, the shattering of the screen suggests the potential failure of the record to communicate such experiences to its anticipated, non-human audience.

Rebecca Brantley T2R What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? San Francisco, CA Referred by her pseudonym, T2R is a Bay Area artist whose work focuses on the intersection of consumerism with social media. Her practice utilizes a variety of media including sculpture, video, digital photocollage, performance, and site-specific installation. Alongside her art practice, she works in product design which has lent to many of her curiosities in the psychological effects of merchandising. Much of her research has been directed towards sites like Personal Optimization Instagram and Facebook, which feature lifestyle bloggers, branding, and digital advertising. She is interested in the absurdity of this content and how the Video individual’s attention has been commodified into an economy of “bottomless” scrolling. Cold soup, pubic hair raw meat (1:46) Exceeds My Expectations (1:13) Biography YAY Beach Selfie!(1:27) Referred by her pseudonym, T2R is a Bay Area artist and product designer. She recently received an MFA in Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts Value: TBD in 2018. She received her BFA in Printmaking and Graphic Design from the University of Michigan. Prior to her MFA program, she had worked in the textile manufacturing industry designing home goods for major retailers in New York City. Her interests, design and consumerism in tandem with themes of big tech, have made San Francisco a rich site for her subject matter.

www.t2rliving.com Instagram: @t2r.calm

Curator’s Thoughts Envisioning a future in which humans have become extinct or exist in altered form, the Golden Record anticipated the concerns of critical theorists of the 1980s concerned with posthumanism. Perhaps the most prominent of these are Donna Haraway’s feminist A Cyborg Manifesto (1984) and Jean-François Lyotard’s The Inhuman (1988). While the former takes a largely positive stance regarding the integration of humans and machines, especially as it impacts women, the latter is far more suspect. Lyotard contends that human thought is bound to a gendered, human body that experiences both pain and desire in order to produce the nuanced and ambiguous thought particular to humans. Though they differ in their interpretations, gender is a prominent concern in both thinkers’ writings.

Using the language of social media and the Internet, T2R’s three videos suggest the development of posthumanist concerns in recent years. In T2R’s three videos for ATHICA’s The Golden Record, the construction of identity is under constant negotiation as gender, technology, and capitalism intersect. T2R’s first video, Cold Soup, Pubic Hair, Raw Meat, shows a woman in red-tinted bathwater. Phrases like “ADD TO CART” call to mind the omnipresence of advertising on the Internet, suggesting the role that consumerism plays in forming social constructs of gender and beauty. Similarly, a woman poses for a series of manipulated selfies in T2R’s second video, Exceeds my Expectations. A “RESIST” sign appears in the course of the video, conjuring a super- ficial engagement with protest culture. A woman in a pink surgical gown might allude to the rise of cosmetic surgery sometimes referred to as “Snapchat dysmorphia.” This phenomenon has emerged due to unrealistic body standards encouraged by filters and alterations on apps like Facetune. Of course the effects of such surgery remains to be seen: they may uphold or erode Haraway’s notion that increased mergence with technology will entail the eradication of harmful gender constructs. Finally, T2R’s third video, Beach Selfie, shows a woman visiting the shore. A hand swiping over running water suggests the ephemeral act of scrolling through images in lieu of a deeper engagement and, perhaps, a merging of nature and artifice. The video ends after she drops the phone on her face, suggesting a jolt of physicality that contrasts her disembodied interaction with the screen thus far. Ultimately, T2R’s videos call to mind the continued relevance of Haraway and Lyotard’s texts—especially as they pertain to gender. Whether new technology entails the loss of core humanity or an improved, transhuman existence remains to be seen.

Rebecca Brantley Gerald Habarth What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Collegeville, PA The animation Voyager II originated from a series of photographs taken while hiking in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. These excursions were marked by a heightened awareness of the synchronous relationship between the sun, the , and my location in space as indicated by my shadow. One couldn’t help thinking of the pre-Columbian and Inca travelers who once roamed that same remote area, and for whom the sun and the moon were critical to deter- Voyager II mining their understanding of the world and their place in it. In a way, those distant travelers in time were like the Voyager spacecraft of today, probing the Digital Animation outermost regions of our solar system. As a child growing up when they were launched, these spacecraft were mystical explorers, sending back our first 4:19 close-up images of the and . NFS Biography Gerald Habarth is a multimedia artist currently serving as Associate of Art at West Virginia University where he heads the Electronic Media program in School of Art and Design. He holds an MFA degree from the University of South Florida and a BFA degree from Parsons School of Design. In 2009 he founded the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival and the program “Space: Atacama,” an adventure art course that takes students to the northern desert region of Chile to create works that focus on perception, experience and multimedia art. His works have screened at numerous national and international venues and festivals.

Curator’s Thoughts Gerald Habrath’s Voyager II features the artist’s shadow as it moves through the natural landscape. Habrath combines the visuals of the Chilean Atacama Desert with the eerie noises of space that surround Jupiter, sounds that were derived from Voyager II’s recording of the ’s magnetosphere. Pairing the Atacama Desert and Jupiter may seem contradictory, yet, the viewer’s method of with these otherwise disparate places—the artist’s shadow and sounds of Jupiter—is comparable. Both shadow and sound serve as proxies that allow us access to the earthly and other-worldly.

Brooke Leeton Robby Toles What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA In relation to the Golden Record, Retrofitting Our Spatiality uses Vaporwave versions of past pop-music hits “Stayin’ Alive” and “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Both songs speak towards the dangers within the speed of life and pop-culture, which has since merged digital and physical worlds, accelerating further into a trajectory of planetary-scale computation. Combined with a smoke-emitting 3-D animation, overlaid onto images of a desert and city, space, and time Retrofitting Our Spatiality become distorted into a flattened technological sublime. This piece satirically uses retro music to position the historical concern about uncertain futures with 3-D animation loop with audio a contemporary vocabulary. Similar to the Golden Record’s mission to reflect cultural trends and topics, my work uses digital symbolism to question the $1,200 future of digital mediation in our everyday life.

Biography Robby Toles received a BFA in photography from University of North Texas in 2016, and he is currently pursuing a MFA from University of Georgia. He’s had work exhibited nationally, published both digitally and physically, and has won an award from the Dallas Museum of Art. Currently, he works with various mediums relating to digital networks and the relationships between them and the individual. Robby Toles and works in Athens, Georgia.

Curator’s Thoughts Both screens in Toles’ Retrofitting Our Spatiality show a smoky, humanoid figure. One walks through a desert, the other traverses a cityscape. Both horizons show the dusky light of the setting sun and suggest the aftermath of a disaster. Slowed-down versions of The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” (1979) and the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” (1977) play. The songs selected for Retrofitting Our Spatiality come from the late seventies and evoke the anxieties of the Voyager era. “Video Killed the Radio Star”—which was used to launch MTV in 1981—evokes both fear of new technology and nostalgia. “Stayin’ Alive” may be taken at face value in the context of Toles’ video: in a post-apocalyptic scenario, basic survival is of central concern.

The Golden Record might be understood to occupy a philosophical margin between modernism and postmodernism, and posthumanism. On one hand, the Voyager mission encapsulates the legacy of the Enlightenment and its narrative of progress, which reached a culminating apex with the Space Age. On the other, the Golden Record’s effort to record and preserve humanity resonates with the concerns of posthumanist thinkers of the 1980s. Posthuman theory encompasses many concerns: the rejection of rationalist humanism, the ascendency of and the advent of Artificial Life, and an apocalypse that brings about the extinction or transformation of modern humans. Retrofitting Our Spatiality conjures such dystopian visions, picturing possible posthuman landscapes of the future. The Golden Record was designed with the hope of outlasting such scenarios, preserving a repre- sentation of humanity.

Rebecca Brantley Mickey Boyd What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA The Voyager spacecraft carried records of gold containing a small amount of information on the human race and coordinates of the planet earth. This work intends to be an instrument for exhibiting the importance and the vast distance traveled by these objects and the value of the messages they carry. The Voyager I has now left the solar system and is farther away from this planet than any object of human design. The design of Voyager Trajectory is a nod to Voyager Trajectory the golden disk in shape and a representation of the extremes of human . A message of hope that the objects furthest away from earth, and thus steel, spray paint, metal wax the closest to those beyond us, contain an optimistic message. $500 Biography Mickey Boyd was born in the Bay Area of California, but moved to Front Range of Colorado in the early part of his life. He was born the youngest in a blended family of four boys. Living on a ranch in the plains of central Colorado provided an essential understanding and love of the vast amount space that exists in the American West. Experiences working in his father’s shop and appreciating the big sky of his family’s home provided a basis for the work that he makes today.

Curator’s Thoughts Mickey Boyd’s Voyager Trajectory mimics the Golden Record in shape and size. Yet, instead of a disk testifying to life on Earth, Boyd’s work charts the two Voyager vessels’ paths out of our solar system, hurtling each Golden Record to its as yet unknown receiver. Voyager Trajectory gives tangible form to the circuitous route the spacecrafts take, before breaking free of our and plunging into interstellar space.

Brooke Leeton Katlin Shae What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Atlanta. GA / Akron, OH Ideas rooted in quantum and the are conceptual interests in my work. As a child captivated by the night sky I looked to public figures like , cosmologist, and astrophysicist Carl Sagan for answers of what lies in beyond our reach. He was a champion of bringing the sci- ences of the cosmic universe to the public, and through the Voyager spacecraft mission, he was able to share parts of life on Earth with the rest of the galaxy. Space Bot (Homage to Voyager) Through the use of symbol, image, and sound, the Golden Record carries a part of Earth’s story into the future, drifting endlessly among the vastness of recycled plastic grocery bags, cotton, metallic threads, steel, zip ties infinite space and time. The Golden Record project captures the magical wonder of being alive at a certain moment in eternity, the same way I use weaving NFS and the grid to conjure magic and wonder while examining my reality and the space and time around me.

Biography Born and raised in northeast Ohio, Katlin Shae received her BFA in the Textile Arts from Kent State University, in Kent Ohio, under the direction of Janice Lessman-Moss. Shae has resided in Atlanta, Georgia, since 2011, recently finishing her MFA degree in Sculpture, Weaving, and Material Studies from The University of Georgia. She has exhibited nation-wide in multiple solo and two person exhibitions, as well as in group shows winning honors such as “Best in Show” and “Complex Weavers Award.” Shae’s work is centered around the labor-intensive processes of weaving, often utilizing many different types of looms: digitally assisted TC-1 Jacquard looms, harness looms, tapestry style frame looms, and backstrap weaving looms. Key components to her practice are: the grid, cosmos, quantum world, time, process, material, color, structure, texture, pattern, object history, transformation, image, symbol, and scale.

Curator’s Thoughts Katlin Shae’s Space Bot (Homage to Voyager) uses an old craft, weaving, to represent the Golden Record’s pictorial instructions of how to use the phono- graphic record. Yet, her materials differ significantly. While she uses recycled plastic grocery bags, cotton, metallic threads, steel, and zip ties, each Golden Record disc was made using gold. NASA selected this material due to its durability since the Voyager vessels will not reach the vicinity of the nearest star for about 40,000 years (to give context: the oldest cave paintings date to about 40,000 years ago). Additionally, while the Golden Record weaves together sounds and coded pictures in the alternating ones and zeros of binary code to represent human life, Shae uses discarded detritus and industrial materials, creating a fabric from the stuff of contemporary day-to-day life. Finally, weaving has many associations—perhaps the most salient is the ancient Greek notion that the Fates controlled threads associated with human destiny that might be cut at any moment. This myth resonates with the Golden Record: its fate, and the legacy of humanity, relies on the chance discovery of the Voyager vessels by an alien lifeform.

Rebecca Brantley Mary Gordon What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA Like the Golden Record, You Are Here is an attempt to capture a taste of the human experience. The book celebrates connectedness, correspondence, wordplay, and awe in small and big things—the lighting of a match, a solar eclipse, a warm cup of tea. While the record features sounds and images of earth, You Are Here is bound together using a variety of papers—handmade, found, printed, discarded. The pages contain images pulled from research within You Are Here the Georgia Ephemera Collection at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia, alongside my own collection of postcards, paper, string, ephemera, mixed media used packaging, stamps, and pieces of maps. It is an attempt to connect what might seem like distant subjects and places, as we all navigate our own way NFS in the world.

Biography Mary Gordon is an artist from , Kansas, currently pursuing her MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts at the University of Georgia. In her work she fuses fragments of prints through collage to represent her environment, everyday interactions, and overlooked happenings. Mary was born in Weinheim, Germany, but has lived in Kansas most of her life. She received a BFA. in Printmaking from Kansas State University in 2014, and Painting in 2015. Through- out her travels, Mary has held a fascination for paper and expressing herself through various materials.

Curator’s Thoughts Mary Gordon’s You Are Here is a bound compilation of found materials that speaks to the human need to document. The Golden Record, too, is the result of the same human urge, described by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as “a kind of , intended to communicate a story of our world.” While Gordon asks viewers to experience her collage with their hands, this method of handling may be incomprehensible to the alien beings that find the Golden Record. So, while we are allowed a physical connection to You Are Here, and derive meaning from its contents, the Golden Record may in the end be a completely useless object, unable to be “used” by the extraterrestrial receiver.

Brooke Leeton Harrison D. Walker What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA Portals explores color, chemistry, and psychological perception through the manipulation of materials, primarily light sensitive. As a native of Huntsville, Alabama, the “Rocket City,” I have always had an interest in the celestial, the otherworldly and the intersection of space and war strategies. After WWII, the US Government further developed Germany’s V-2 rocket under the guidance of its creator, . This technology was instru- Portals mental to the first lunar landing, and continues to play a major role in the development of the US Program and NASA. Though not explicitly Cyanotype, Van Dyke Brown, Gum Bichromate, Etching Ink, Graphite, Spray Paint, Sodium Carbonate, Tannic Acid referenced in the imagery of the Portals, the V-2 rocket serves as a touchstone throughout the project. $850.00 (Editioned prints) $2,000.00 (One of a kind prints)

Biography Harrison D. Walker (b. Huntsville, AL) is an artist living in Athens, Georgia, working as a printmaker and freelance project consultant. He received his MFA at Tyler School of Art, Temple University, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Following graduate school, he served as faculty for a one- appointment at Maine Media Workshops + College in Rockport, Maine. This past fall, Walker was a visiting artist in the Printmaking Department at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. He is currently represented by Corey Daniels Gallery, Wells, Maine and Candela Books + Gallery, Richmond, Virginia. He has shown at Soho Photo, New York, New York; City Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Pop Gallery, Brisbane, Australia. His work has been featured in The Hand Magazine, Photo-Emphasis, and Streit House Space. Works can be found in the Acquisition Collection at Candela Books + Gallery, Richmond, Virginia; Target Distri- bution Center, Huntsville, Alabama; and in The Free Library of Philadelphia Print and Picture Collection.

Gallery Representation: Corey Daniels Gallery (Wells, ME) and Candela Books + Gallery (Richmond, VA)

Curator’s Thoughts A looming circle is the formal tie that binds each print in Harrison Walker’s Portals project. The shape reminds viewers of a camera lens, the device used by the Voyager probes to capture the first images of planets in our solar system. And, while much is made about the Golden Record’s delivery of images to the cosmos, we must remember that the Voyager’s mission was to beam pictures back to Earth. So borne out in Walker’s work, the camera lens is a portal, indicating a passage to a new world, devoid of pesky hindrances like space and time. Walker’s images repeat this foundational circle, re-iterating the promise of something new, something different, something alien.

Brooke Leeton Catherine Clements What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA I’m interested in how we define ourselves, and especially how we define ourselves relative to the things, thoughts, and people around us. The Golden Record interests me as a collaborative attempt by humans to define ourselves, to otherworldly interceptors, but also to ourselves. Mythos Handmade Paper Biography NFS Catherine Clements has a BFA in Two-Dimensional Studies with an emphasis in Printmaking from Bowling Green State University, which she earned in 2013. She is a current MFA Candidate at the University of Georgia. She enjoys gardening, cooking, and all forms of fiction.

catherineclements.com

Curator’s Thoughts Catherine Clements’s work Mythos consists of a stack of handmade papers, produced specifically for this exhibition, accompanied by an invitation for visitors to take a sheet. Each paper bears one of five watermarks, barely legible to the viewer, requiring close inspection for detection. Much like the paper that bears a trace of the artist’s intervention, the Golden Record is merely a trace of humanity. The work suggests the intimate handling necessary to get the message buried in the object’s surface, whether that’s a watermark—in the case of Clements’s Mythos—or something as grandiose as the Golden Record’s endeavor to convey the entirety of life on Earth.

Rebecca Brantley / Brooke Leeton Braden Skelton What is the relationship of the Golden Record to your work? Athens, GA This piece represents America as it is today: fast, capitalist, and shocking. It mimics American culture by leveling the media hierarchy, where the president is side by side with YouTube , and where the extreme or the profound is side-by-side with the banal. Untitled Biography McDonald’s Drive Thru console, wooden pallet, poured plaster faux marble column, LED lights, digital video I’m a film studies and ArtX major at the University of Georgia and am a practicing contemporary artist. 6:38 NFS

Curator’s Thoughts Braden Skelton’s Untitled assemblage recalls a ruin, a physical reminder of the past. The plaster column harkens back to ancient Greco-Roman architec- ture. A fast food drive-through console represents more recent structures of the twentieth and twenty-first century, anticipating their eventual decay. While not a literal ruin, the Golden Record functions much like one, presenting humanity in incomplete, decontextualized sounds and images.

Rebecca Brantley ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art is an independent, non-profit gallery promoting and supporting innovative contemporary art and artists through exhibitions, education, and events.

Exhibition Credits Curators: Brooke Leeton, Rebecca Brantley, Jon Vogt, Paula Runyon Preparators: Jon Vogt, Paula Runyon, Kayla King Writers: Brooke Leeton, Rebecca Brantley Record: Camille Hayes, Paula Runyon, Jason NeSmith, Chase Park Transduction, Kindercore Vinyl Record Release Party and Closing Event Booklet: Lauren Fancher

Friday, October 5, 2018, 7-10 PM ATHICA Board of Directors Meagan Bens, Sylvan Olson Cown, John English, Lauren Fancher, Camille Hayes, Joni Younkins-Herzog, Richard Herzog, Jim Moneyhun, Laura Straehla, Vickie Suplee, Jon Vogt